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Dear Mr. Skinner:

At present McDonald’s is arguably the world’s foremost brand, its shares test a 52-week high, and with restaurants seemingly everywhere consumers exist, seemingly only a fool would question its strategy. So at risk of coming off as a fool, I’ll say McDonald’s is very much in denial, and my assertion has nothing to do with Subway having recently passed it in terms of store count.

In denial about what, you may ask? To put it very simply, the quality of the food served at McDonald’s has been in freefall for at least 20 years, and as someone who grew up believing that its Quarter Pounders were part of the best meal in the world, I can no longer order them, let alone much else on McDonald’s menu.

For background, I grew up in Pasadena, California, and if a week went by in which my parents didn’t take me to the LaCanada, CA location on Foothill Boulevard at least three times, it was a slow week indeed. This location is extremely well-run to this day, and the problem is not operational as much as the taste of McDonald’s food has declined substantially.

The problems at McDonald’s for me seemingly began in the early ‘90s. While attending the University of Texas at Austin, the Harvard Business School notion of uniformity in restaurant quality became a grand myth. Some restaurants were clean with good food, some were horrid, and this meant that my friends and I would often drive miles (on a college budget no less) in search of well-run McDonald’s outlets.

But by the mid ‘90s, the quality of the food at all of its restaurants plummeted, period. And while my presumption of lower food quality is perhaps belied by the McDonald’s share price, the unseen in the price is what it might be if the food at McDonald’s remotely resembled what it did during the chain’s halcyon era of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Back then, to order a Quarter Pounder with cheese (ketchup only in my case) was to eat a hamburger that dripped, literally and figuratively, with flavor. Conversely, to order a Quarter Pounder today with what is presumably leaner beef is to bite into something that’s dry, and largely tasteless, unless of course it quite simply tastes bad, which is often the case. This is my experience whether the McDonald’s is clean and well-run, or dirty and poorly run.

Sadly, this reality has forced on me what I call the “McDonald’s hedge.” Well aware based on a great deal of experience that at least one hamburger will be dry and taste like the grill, I’m now forced to order at least two hamburgers during every visit knowing full well that at least one will lie uneaten.